The Arabah will blossom and bloom…

Trample

I stand at the door on snow day, watching Husband and children exchange fire.

They are all laughing, eating “ice cream,” as daughter sees it.

“Hey Mom!” Oldest son sees me standing at the door. “The snow is almost gone right here because we’ve trampled it so much.”

It flashes, it ignites, it comes to life, the word “trample.”

Gone because of trampling.

I think of my job with “Little Bit,” as I affectionately call her, the job of helping her pave new paths in her brain, help her override the established path of panic and distrust…of FEAR. Help her trample new paths of love and trust.

Could some of our promised territory be taken only by treading it again and again, by establishing new paths, by learning to reject the old path of pain and rejection and doubt and trample again the new?

To make the old gone because of trampling.

I turn from the door and look up the word “tread” in the original language. I find “darak,” and one of the definitions is “to trample.” God has given us promises, “every spiritual blessing,” in fact. And it is our job to “trample,” to tread on those promises until the old patterns and habits are a thing of the past and we fully possess the promise and we have “laid hold.”

“Every place on which the sole of your foot treads {tramples}, I have given it to you, just as I promised…” Joshua 1:3

I wonder how much ground I don’t possess simply because I fail to tread? Do I cower in fear, like the Israelites did? Do I not want to put forth the effort and cave to exhaustion instead? Or do I find my strength in the Lord?

If this year is going to be that of Conquest, then I must practice trampling.

The Garbage Truck comes and refuses to pick up our busted trash can, for the 2nd week. It seems we are stuck with a useless can. Something about seeing it tumped over, innards gaping open and mouth broken makes me feel fear. Panic. Vulnerability.

Totally irrational, I know.

But old patterns were triggered. Memories of doing everything possible to get rid of something unwanted and needing someone else to step in, lend a hand, pick up when I could go no further.

But they didn’t.

Panic is the response of one drowning, the rash attempt to save one’s life. The feeling of being overwhelmed, of waters covering the head. I know it well. It is quietly triggered in the strangest of ways.

Yet trample reminds me that even water can be tread.

Suddenly I have a desire to go outside and walk in the snow. I grab my jacket, slip boots on, leave girl on potty and littlest in high chair and others to fend for themselves.

I trample snow. I feel the ground give way beneath the soles, hear the crunch of tread.

I leave footprints and look at the territory I have claimed. I see how much unbroken white remains.

This is the year of conquest and I must trample.

Later, we sit down to dinner and Husband glances over at me, then does a double take. He gets up from his chair, comes near, and cups my face in his hands. “Your face is glowing,” he says.

[…] I go outside and trample more snow. I go to the edges, where there are no footprints…unclaimed territory. I walk back and forth, making long furrows in the snow. I think of the gift of this snow and all it has shown me this week and I know He is for me. “You are for me,” I thrill over and over out loud as I tramp and tread and claim new ground. […]